Looking for a Miracle

Anybody noticed that it’s a pretty lousy time to try to sell a house? A dozen or so of our neighbors have figured it out. Their for-sale signs weather and their asking prices drop before our very eyes. And that was before all of today’s incomprehensible talk of credit confidence and corporate bailouts.

So whatcha gonna do when God calls you to sell your nice suburban house and relocate to one of the poorer neighborhoods in town? Argue with Him about the market slump? Lecture Him on U.S. economic policy? Squawk about His bad timing? Moses tried these tactics, and look how far they got him. He still ended up completing God’s assignment, and I bet as he held back the raging waters of the Red Sea, he felt a little foolish for all his weaseling and hem-hawing.

Our miracle doesn’t need to be anything as fancy as the Parting of the Sea. We just need a buyer dropped on our porch—in the most unstable economy of our lifetime—who says, “Yeah, don’t worry about the stained carpet or the overgrown foliage or the garage that I can’t even see because of all your wonderful crap. I’m good with that. I’ll take it just the way it is.” We need him (or her, or them; we’re not picky) to walk past all the nicer, cleaner houses for sale on our block and instead be magnetically drawn to our vintage 1970’s yellow rancher. He’ll have to avoid the kids’ boards, nails, and hammers on the front porch (we wonder how our milkman escapes injury on those dark delivery mornings). He’ll need to appreciate the stinkbug–sweaty-socks–aging-dog-with-intestinal-issues aroma wafting from the basement. He’ll need to find it charming that the only décor in the house is children’s artwork and remind himself that, luckily, the ratty furniture moves on to the next house. He’ll need to be a lover of wildlife—bears in the front yard, coyotes (loud ones) in the back, and deer chewing up anything with chlorophyll. He’ll have to have vision for a spacious dining room that currently houses every children’s toy made since 1999 and a busy mom’s cluttery desk. Mostly, he’ll need to have a lot of faith that God gave him the correct address. And then, he—or she or them—will get to be part of the miracle.

Any takers?!

Despite what my eyes and the newspaper tell me, I believe God will bring us a buyer. I believe it in some indescribable, way-down-deep, all-is-right-with-the-world sort of way. Or, as I read in a book recently, I know it in my knower. The hard work—getting a family of flawed, harried, self-absorbed, fearful people to change the course of their lives and follow Him wherever He leads—has already been done. Compared to flesh and blood, a little brick and mortar are a piece of cake.

Some Cheery Thoughts on Death

I was sitting with a group of church women I don’t know well, talking about a lot of things, when the subject of death came up. One woman said, “I just don’t know how I’d respond if I found out I only had a few months to live. I don’t want to find out. I hope I just drop dead.”

I offered up to the group my hypothesis on facing death: that we become a more extreme version of who we already are. One who feels angry and hopeless will experience more extreme anger and hopelessness. One who feels grateful and hopeful will feel extra measures of those emotions. One who has spent a lifetime hungering for face-to-face fellowship with their Creator will be like a weary traveler pulling into a five-star hotel.

It puzzles me that so many followers of Christ are just as squeamish and fearful about death as those who don’t believe in an afterlife. If we really believe that heaven is our true home, why do we live in fear and dread of getting there? Is it the journey, which may be painful and humiliating, that we fear? Or the sadness of being separated from the people we love? It’s a lot of things, I’m sure, but it’s too bad those things take our eyes off the prize.

I remember that after my dad died, I would think of him all the time and try to imagine what he was doing. I knew even less about heaven then than I do now (which is not much), but I would get a little twinge of excitement just thinking about what it might be like. I still do. I’ve been trying for a couple years to get through Randy Alcorn’s book, Heaven. The editor in me wants to dive into it with a red pen (I think it should be half the length it is), but I do love his proposition that heaven is filled with culture—music, literature, drama, sports, architecture—far beyond what we find on earth. The picture he paints is much more compelling than the harp-playing, cloud-floating image many of us carry in our heads. 

Most of us will get a chance to test my hypothesis. The leading "killers," cancer and heart disease, don’t happen overnight. They allow their victims time to settle into the idea of death. Time to figure out who they’re going to be for the rest of their life. Unlike the lady I met last week, I hope I do get a chance to find out who I’ll be. I hope I’ll run the last leg of my life with genuine joy and anticipation. And I hope I get a lot of stretching time before that race begins!

Lucky 13

Kevin and I recently celebrated our 13th anniversary. We returned to the place we got engaged—our first time back to the Antlers Hotel since that gray day in January 1995. It was a Wednesday morning, I believe, when I walked out of my apartment to head to work; instead, I was met by a limo and a very peaked Kevin, my boyfriend of 10 months. Since limos were not a regular part of our dating life, I suspected that this was the Big Day. I wonder what we talked about as we weaved through the streets of Colorado Springs on our way to the Antlers? All I remember was being consumed with thoughts of my bad hair day and the ugly jacket I was wearing. (It took some of us longer to creep out of the ’80s than it did the rest of you.) Not exactly the Cinderella-look I had envisioned.

We ate Belgian waffles in the hotel restaurant before parking ourselves on a nicely-chilled bench in the courtyard. Neither Kevin nor I can remember the words he said prior to pulling out that blue velvet box. Really, if we’re being honest, for a girl it’s all about what’s inside the velvet box. Yeah, yeah, I complete you and all, but let’s see what’s in the box already. I loved the contents of the box, the man with the dreamy blue eyes who crouched before me, and the vision in my head of what married life would be. So I said sure. Just like that, seven months and a lot of credit-card debt later, we were hitched.

Looking out on the hotel courtyard during our recent stay, I tried to picture what those two crazy kids on that bench were thinking. At 24 and 26, awkward dating experiences, college degrees and first jobs behind us, we felt so ready to jump into the next stage of life. But how little we knew about each other. When you really think about it, though, is there any amount of time that can fully prepare you to live every remaining day of your life in intimate proximity with another person? I don’t think so. Nothing could have prepared us for the emotional adventures of having children together, struggling with a new business together, delivering a stillborn baby together.

It’s quite a gamble, actually. A gamble that requires huge commitment. These are the things I knew nothing of as I sat on that bench ogling my first-ever diamond. A bride-to-be thinks about fabric swatches and flatware and where to seat her grandfather’s flamboyant new girlfriend. She’s not thinking about the moments of tense words and hard decisions that unfold into a lifetime. Maybe that’s for the best. If we really knew how much work it was going to be, who would be so quick to say yes? I’m just thankful that though I was clueless, I was also very “lucky.” (Yeah, like I believe in luck.) The more I get to know the man behind the dreamy blue eyes, the more thankful I am to be the one he chose.

Seven Years Later

It took me, as I drove through my kids’ carpool line this morning, about 15 seconds to figure out why the American flag was at half-mast. Just seven years after 9/11, and all it takes is my usual morning of kid craziness to make me forget. My kids noticed the flag, too, and when I told them today is 9/11, the older two nodded with faint recognition. I gave them a weak account of the significance of today, thinking I would at least prepare them for their teachers’ mention of it, but that mention never occurred.

Later, when I picked them up and took Braden in for a haircut, I listened to a couple of employees talk about their first 9/11, or at least their first memorable one. The man buzzing the clippers around my son’s ear watched the events unfold that day on a TV in his high school. They all did. And the nine-year-old getting his hair cut? He was also glued to the TV that day seven years ago, except unlike everyone else on the planet, he was watching Blue’s Clues. He got to watch a lot of TV that day. Preschool shows played one after the other on our main TV while I sat alone in my bed, watching the horror play out on my little TV. I was nine months pregnant, and as my little Addison squirmed inside of me, for the first time I regretted my decision to bring another child into this world. I remember thinking of end-times biblical passages that describe how things will be extra hard for pregnant women. “That’s me,” I thought. “The world is ending and I can’t even get my shoes on.”

We’d been in our new home just about a week, and we had nothing in the house to eat. I finally pulled myself together enough to drive with Braden to the grocery store, and I remember the eerie silence there. No one said a word; we just kept our eyes glued to the several TVs that appeared out of nowhere to ensure the grocery-store patrons didn’t miss a single grim detail.

I remember the first anniversary. One of the TV news shows gathered all the 9/11 babies—those who lost their daddies (mostly) on that day—and told stories of now-single mothers delivering and raising their babies alone. Lisa Beamer was one of those; I read her book and tangibly felt her pain. I prayed regularly for her and her three fatherless kids. Now, seven years later, I had to google “Let’s Roll” to even remember her last name.

Time does heal. That’s not necessarily always a good thing. Sometimes it heals too well.

The Consequence of "Yes"

With apologies for being so unoriginal, I have to throw out my two cents on Sarah Palin. Maybe just one cent. The last thing the world needs is one more person spewing their political views all over the Internet or commenting on this candidate, in particular. I am not a political blogger and have zero aspirations to become one. I’m not politically savvy or inclined. But what I am is a woman and a mom who cares deeply about the lives of other women and other moms. Sarah Palin falls into both of these categories, and I have spent a lot of time trying to imagine what her life must be like right now.

Unless you’re Billy Rae Cyrus, I don’t think you can begin to imagine what that degree of scrutiny feels like for you and your family. I watched Palin’s young daughter slather her spit on her baby brother’s hair in front of an audience of 38 million and silently thanked God that my children’s only audience is the three people standing behind me at Walmart—and their kids are all doing something more questionable than mine. I try to imagine what it must be like for her husband—Did he sign up for this when he popped the question?—and for her daughter’s boyfriend, who must surely wince at his 15 minutes of fame (and even more so the 15 minutes that got him into all of this in the first place).

From the little I know, I like Sarah Palin as a political candidate. She seems to represent a lot of my views and articulates them enviably well. But if Sarah Palin were my friend, I’d have to ask her what she’s going to sacrifice to live out this dream. Is it worth it? It’s not so much a question of whether she can handle it. I get the feeling she could hunt down terrorists in Iraq with her older son while simultaneously nursing her younger one. But just because she can do it, just because it’s the biggest opportunity of her life that might not knock again, should she do it?

I’m not sure. I know how I would answer the question for me, as preposterous as it is to imagine myself in such circumstances. I know that I don’t have the energy to split my attention between two such monumental tasks. And though the opportunity to make history and serve as a role model for generations of girls to come is pretty heady stuff, if it kept me from being the role model to my three daughters that I so desperately want to be, I’d have to pass.

It’s not just Sarah Palin who has to answer these types of questions. On some scale, we all do. Any choice for something is a choice against something else, whether you admit that or not. Governor Palin’s meteoric rise has got people thinking and talking a lot. For me, at least this week, she's got me thinking through the consequences of all I say yes to, and asking, "Is it worth it?"

Time Warp

My two oldest kids have been back in school a week now, and that has brought with it a profound revelation. I am getting a second chance that a lot of people don’t get—the chance to pour my time and attention into two young children again. This epiphany came to me as I huffed and puffed behind 85 pounds of kid, plastic, rubber, and aluminum. Today, because I’m down to just two, we pulled the double stroller out of storage.

With Addison in school all day for the first time, I feel like I’ve traveled back in time six years to the last time I spent the majority of my time with a preschooler and toddler. Despite the differences in gender, personality, and a slightly larger age gap, it all feels strangely familiar. After a summer spent hauling around an eight-legged mass of children, I’m now back to looking for little-kid parks and hanging out with the 29-year-old moms I find there. I try, mostly unsuccessfully, to remember what it was like the first time around. I see these mothers with their fussy babies and rambunctious two-year-olds and think, “That looks like a lot of work.” Then I remember, “Oh, yeah. I used to do that work. And now I do it with four.” But it’s different now. I think I’m different now.

When my first two were the age my last two are now, I was 32. I was at the height of my career. I felt successful, efficient, invincible. I ran meetings and ran baths, shuffled my kids from place to place, signed them up for KinderMusik, and danced with them to the Wiggles. I warmed Braden’s milk until he was three, read parenting magazines at stop lights, and held onto Addison’s swimsuit while she splashed in our baby pool and I edited. I loved it all, but it felt like so much work, and I gleefully awaited the day when my children would . . . just . . . get . . . older.

And it’s all a blur. I know I did it, but I remember so little of it.

Now I find myself with a second chance. And the biggest difference—the intangible experience that you can’t buy or learn from a magazine or take someone else’s word for—is that now I know how fast it goes. Of course everyone from my mother-in-law to my dentist told me this, but now I know it for myself. As much as I love efficiency and long for time to myself, I am forcing myself to slow down, “unschedule,” and burn the images—the beautiful, fleeting images—into my brain.

This sounds more noble than it is. I can’t say I’m not envious when I see my neighbor—whose two kids are the ages of my older two—head out for a two-hour run or when I walk into her immaculate home. Not a crayon-colored wall or a stinky diaper in sight. But I also feel a little sorry for her, and I know my time will come. And maybe then, five years from now, after I’ve done it all the third and fourth times around, I’ll be ready to close the little-kid chapter of my life. But I sorta doubt it.

The Center of God's Heart

When I was in high school, every time I couldn’t find something my brother and I joked that mom probably gave it to the poor and the needy. She rifled through our closets for unworn clothes and gave away our furniture; our jokes barely covered our resentment. See, I thought we were the poor and the needy. We lived in a trailer house. My mom was a 40-year-old widow with a secretary’s salary. I drove my grandma’s smoke-infested, 1970-something beast of a car. Yet still my mom found people who could use my old track shoes.

Today, my mom can fit all her worldly possessions into one room and lives in a house with women who walked out of jail 24 hours earlier. Her example and her genes must run deep. This summer, I’ve been doing a Bible study on the poor, and it’s not hard to see that those who suffer poverty, oppression, and injustice are right in the center of God’s heart. So I’ve been asking what I’m supposed to do with what God's teaching me, because as much as I try to distract myself with kids’ playdates and freelance work and trips to WalMart and my cute blond highlights, there's a strong pull to be meaningfully involved with people a lot different from me.

One of the last projects I worked on for The Navigators was a book about Neighborhood Ministries in Phoenix. It changed me more than I’ll ever know. NM started when one woman saw a need and tried to meet it. It began with an inner-city kids’ camp one week out of the summer—now it's a broad, comprehensive ministry that occupies a city block. For 20 years, the people of Neighborhood Ministries have looked around, asked people what they need, and provided it. Food pantry, thrift store, tutoring, preschool, mentoring for teenagers in gangs and with babies, job opportunities, and on and on. (Their website is full of info and provides the verses to do your own study on the poor.)

Then, through laughable, only-God-could-do-it circumstances, Kate entered our lives. Kate is a recent college graduate, a suburban Florida girl, who did a summer internship at NM last year and never turned back. Except to fundraise. No one really pays you to do the kind of work Kate will be doing—hanging out with kids who have almost nothing, telling them how much God loves them, reading the Bible with them, being the kind of friend, safe and unconditional, they’ve never known. So Kate’s back in Florida, looking for supporters who will love the poor with their money the way Kate loves them with her kindness.

Three days after we met Kate and decided to support her, we went to Las Vegas for a timeshare presentation. God’s timing never ceases to amuse me. For about the same monthly amount we were planning to give Kate, we could have access to resort vacation condos all over the world. Our “host” even offered to throw in an all-inclusive trip to Hawaii for our entire family if we signed up! I’ll admit he started getting to me with that one, but Kevin stood firm. I hope we will get to take some of those vacations one day, but more than that, I hope we’ll get to make an all-inclusive trip to visit Kate at Neighborhood Ministries. 

For now, we pray for her and all God has in store for her. The kids have started a "Kate Can," and during our dinner prayer,  Brooka asks God to "help Kate get her money real good and find people who say 'Yes! Yes! Yes!' " And I cry in my creamed corn. Because Brooka gets it. She and the other kids seem to naturally care about the things that are important to God. I have so much to learn from them.

(If you’d like to know more about Kate or how to partner with her, please e-mail me! If God’s been talking to you about the poor, you need to talk to Kate!)